Ghost Fishing: Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology

The University of Georgia has just published a stunning anthology, entitled GHOST FISHING: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, edited by Melissa Tuckey, with a Foreword by the great poet Camille T. Dungy. There are poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, Joy Harjo, Brenda Hillman, Arthur Sze, Javier Zamora, and many others. I'm honored to have three of my poems included:

The Parable of St. Matthew Island

In the Bering Sea, the Coast Guard brought 29 reindeer to the island as back-up food supply for the nineteen soldiers stationed there. After World War II, the base was closed. Thirteen years later, a thousand reindeer fed on the four-inch thick mat of lichen that covered the island, then six thousand a decade later. In just three more years, travelers found only a small herd, not much lichen, and fields of reindeer skeletons. Soon, it was only skeletons.

The Dreams of Antelope

In Yosemite, they introduced wolves back into the mountains, which fed again on the antelope, which stopped over-eating the willow trees, so the birds returned to sing and beavers started making dams again from the fallen branches, resurrecting the marshes, and once more everything started turning green because a wild predator was allowed back into the dreams of antelope.

A Great Civilization

In the island forests of Bolivia before any white man found them, the Arawak cultivated lianas thick as a human arm,blade-like leaves dangling six feet longand smooth-boled Brazil nut trees, the thick-bodied flowers smelling like warm meat. Earth mounds rose above waters cultivated as canals for travel between spacious villages framedby moats and palisades, along which they’d walkin long cotton tunics, heavy ornaments danglingfrom wrists and necks. But in 1927,

anthropologists found their descendents living in constant hunger, no clothes, no cows or llamas,no musical instruments,no art—except necklaces of animal teeth—unable to count beyond three, no religion, no conception of the universe. They

thought they’d stumbled upon a primitivehumankind living in the rawness of naturefor millennia—unaware that when the first Europeans arrived centuries before, influenza and smallpox raced ahead, bringing the Arawak to their knees. And no one

knew, till now: scientists piecing together records of teeth, shards of pottery, eco-analysis and voila!a great mysterious culture heretoforeunknown emerged from the mists of history. Might we too—

this culture of moon travel,the great web of internet,an entire library of world musicin the palm of a hand—one day